Never Expect a Fairytale Ending
by heystella
Summary: The inevitable question “Are you happy?” launches an unexpected answer. HeijiKazuha.


Never Expect a Fairytale Ending  
by Kaiyrah

The inevitable question "Are you happy?" launches an unexpected answer. HeijiKazuha.  
Detective Conan isn't mine. If it were, Heiji wouldn't be so darn stupid – er, clueless. Heh.

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Kazuha didn't think it would turn out like this. She'd always watched movies, read books, heard stories about how the girl would always go off with some guy and the guy she was with before would go up to her and ask if she was happy. Then the girl would say that she wasn't, they would embrace passionately, get married, and have a happy fairytale ending.

She would laugh if the situation itself wasn't so serious. Yes, this time the roles were switched, and she found herself staring at the phone while she tried to formulate her words.

She was determined to talk to Heiji. But whenever she thought of him, it just _hurt_.

It was around five months ago when she noticed certain things were different. For instance, he wouldn't talk to her as often as he used to, and he hardly ever waited around after school to walk her home. She couldn't remember the last time she opened the door in the morning to find him on her front step waiting for her so they could walk to school together. She figured that he just wanted to try and befriend other people, and she wasn't going to prevent him from doing that.

She had noticed that he'd begun hanging out with one of their classmates, a pretty girl named Hana. And she was nice, too; Kazuha had talked to her a couple of times. Hana was also smart, second in the class only to Heiji, and so the two were the class representatives. They naturally spent a good amount of time together. Kazuha thought nothing of it.

Then one day, she walked into class and took her seat as usual. A couple of girls that she talked to regularly approached her solemnly. She blinked. "Something wrong?"

One of the girls frowned. "Kazuha-chan, you've been replaced."

She raised an eyebrow, not quite following. "What?"

Another one sat down in the desk next to her. "Heiji and Hana are going out. They made it official yesterday."

Something inside of her cracked. Kazuha swallowed, and suddenly there was a painful pounding sensation in her heart, as if someone was hammering a thousand nails into it. She tried to take a deep breath and found that all of the oxygen was stuck in her lungs. _Hurts. Pain. Can't breathe – _"They're both class reps. That's why it looks like they're going out, because they spend so much time together…"

"Do you truly believe that, Kazuha-chan?"

…She thought she did.

And she continued believing it for a good month, until the signs started appearing. How they would walk into class holding hands, how Heiji would abruptly pull his hand from hers once his eyes landed on Kazuha. How he would sit just a little closer to Hana during homeroom discussions. How he would look at her when he thought she didn't notice with the most remorseful look in his eye.

Kazuha was hurt. She thought she knew Heiji better than that; she thought that he wouldn't deliberately keep something as important as that from her. But he did.

It was a Wednesday night, and it was around 11 o'clock. She was well-aware that he might be sleeping, or off solving a case or something, but still she took the chance. She was used to doing so.

The phone rang about four times before he answered. "Hello?" His voice was sleepy – she must have woken him up.

"It's me."

"Kazuha?"

"Yeah. Um… Can I see you?"

"Kazuha, it's late. Can it wait?"

She paused. If she didn't do it now, she would never end up doing it. "No. It's really important, and it won't take too much time."

A groan. "Okay. Are you coming over or should I go over there?"

"No need. We'll just meet at the park. By the tennis courts, if that's okay?"

"Alright. I'll be there in a few."

"Same here."

Around half an hour later, she spotted him pacing near the water fountain next to the tennis courts. "Yo, Kazuha. What's up?"

She slowed as she stopped in front of him. "We need to talk."

Heiji frowned. "And you said it wouldn't take long. Couldn't this wait until tomorrow? We've got that important physics exam tomorrow, unless you forgot."

"It's something that's been bugging me for a while," she began, scratching the back of her head. "About you."

"When are you not bothered by something about me – "

"And Hana-san."

He swallowed visibly. "Y-yeah?"

It hurt to hear it. Heiji never stumbled on his words. For a split-second, she was contemplating throwing aside anything she was going to say and invite him to go have something to eat at the local diner, but that was just cowardly… and not to mention he would get royally pissed at being woken up for such a stupid reason. She bit her lip. "Uh… let's walk."

Kazuha waited for Heiji to fall in step with her before facing forward. "You're going out with Hana-san now, aren't you?"

He instinctively sidled farther away from her. "…Yeah. How did you…"

"Things get around," she responded. "But hearing things from other people isn't the way I wanted to find out, Heiji. I wanted to hear it from you. Any particular reason why you chose not to tell me?"

Heiji was silent, his eyes cast down to the ground.

"If you don't want to tell me, that's okay," she remarked with a smile. "I know we're friends, but I also know that there's some things you just can't tell other people." She stopped walking and turned to face him. "But I want you to tell me this one thing if nothing else."

Finally Heiji met her eyes, and she faltered for a second. In his eyes, she saw so much. In his eyes…

She couldn't even describe what she saw.

"Does… Can she make you happy?"

He looked down again, eyes covered by his bangs. "Yeah."

She closed her eyes, blinking back the tears she should have expected. She could have sworn that his answer wouldn't have come so easily – she wanted it to be like in the stories and the movies and the books, she wanted her happy ending, she wanted him to say that Hana-san couldn't make him happy no matter how hard she tried – but Heiji was an honest man, even when it hurt. "That's all I need to know, then."

Kazuha turned to face him. She chose the spot deliberately – their relationship began here, and she figured that it would wise to end it here as well. "Do you remember this playground, Heiji?"

His eyes turned to the towering wooden and steel structure. The tire swing was still on the left side, flanked by two sets of regular swings. On the right side, just as he remembered, there were four identical steel slides, coming down from a tangled mass of wooden bridge, monkey bars, fire poles, and fort. The lamp light cast an eerie shadow on the structures, but in daylight, the white painted playground was nothing short of heavenly. He smiled fondly, even if he figured that it wasn't the right moment to do so. "Ah. How could I forget?"

At that moment, she abandoned her shoes and socks outside of the boundaries of the playground, letting her toes sink into the cold sand. Reluctantly, Heiji followed suit.

Kazuha stopped walking once they reached the lot of sand that was under the four slides and went down on her knees. "You remember what happened here, right?"

Heiji squatted down to meet her eye level. "Yeah. It was fifteen years ago. How I was playing cops and robbers with some of the other kids, and you wouldn't go down the slide."

She had to smile. "You were so pissed at me."

He shrugged. "You wouldn't go down. So I had to force you."

"Yup. That was when we first met."

He nodded. "Yeah. So… what exactly are we doing here now?"

"Letting go of our past memories," Kazuha answered vaguely. Upon taking out her wallet, she pulled from it her omamori – _the_ omamori, her most important one. "Call me sentimental, but I really think we need to let go of these. Give me yours."

He paused. "Why should we get rid of em? We're not going to stop being friends just because I've started going out with a girl… right?"

Kazuha smiled, pained. "That's how things look at the moment."

Confusedly, he watched as Kazuha buried both his and her omamoris in the sand under the slides.

And before he knew it, she was gone from sight.

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Kazuha had to thank Heiji sooner or later. He was making the healing process a lot easier – he never called or talked to her unless it was required for class. He disappeared in the mornings and afternoons. He even made a point of avoiding eye contact with her.

And it hurt to see him and Hana-san together at school. But she found that after a bit of time, it wasn't that bad.

She might have even said that she was over him.

Regardless, her fellow aikido instructors at the dojo were commenting on how her forms hadn't been looking very good recently.

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It was the day after their graduation. Kazuha knew that Heiji was going to Todai the very next semester. He certainly had the grades for it; she wasn't quite sure why his parents hadn't held a farewell party for him. It seemed only proper for the only son of the head of the Osaka police department.

She'd been accepted to a smaller university in Osaka, and she already decided on her major. It was only natural to go into criminal justice; it was something she had grown up with – her father was an inspector, her late mother was a police officer, and her best friend was a detective. And when it came down to it, she really couldn't see herself doing anything else.

When Heiji called her at precisely 11 o'clock that night, to say that she was surprised was an understatement.

"Hello?"

"It's me."

"Heiji? Is something wrong?"

"Nope. But do you think we can meet?"

Kazuha glanced at the clock. "Um… it's not a problem. Where?"

"The playground. Is that okay?"

"Mm-hmm. I'll be there."

"Alright. I'll wait."

Sure enough, in about a half-hour, Heiji saw Kazuha approaching the playground, her hands shoved in her pockets. "So is there any reason for calling me out here during the middle of the night? Besides getting revenge for that one incident a few months ago?"

He shook his head, signaling her to come closer. "Me and Hana broke up."

Kazuha tried to ignore how much lighter her heart felt after hearing it. "… I see. Didn't work out, then?"

"Pretty much. You and her are too different."

"Oh." Then she blinked, and she looked at him incredulously. Did he just say…

Before she had any time to further think on it, he was in front of her, slipping a red omamori over her head. It was the omamori she thought she'd buried… So how did it resurface?

"The truth is, I knew a long time ago that it wouldn't work out," he admitted, tucking the blue omamori under his shirt. "But I let it go on so I could try to convince myself otherwise. In the end, it wasn't the same."

Kazuha glanced at the omamori. "So you're saying that…"

He grinned sheepishly. "I'm not good with all this romance stuff. You know that. It took a good talking-to with Kudou to help me figure it out. But now everything's clear."

A smile grew on her face. "So now you know?"

"Now I know."

Heiji reached for her hand then, and Kazuha took it gratefully.

_Are you happy?_

_Yes. At least, now I am._

Her fairytale ending wasn't so farfetched after all.

End.


End file.
